


Revenge is a dish best served outside the view of witnesses

by ultharkitty



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-28
Updated: 2012-10-28
Packaged: 2017-11-17 05:28:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultharkitty/pseuds/ultharkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unicron's attack has left Shockwave broken and vulnerable, and the very worst of people finds him. </p><p>Contains graphic violence and gore, torture, non-sexual p'n'p rape, implied snuff.</p><p>Written for the tf_speedwriting Spam Weekend, to the prompt: <i>'That cold ain’t the weather, that’s death approaching.'</i><br/>30 Days of Night (2007)</p><p>Note - I adore Shockwave, but horrible things tend to happen to my favourite characters. This is my headcanon for the Dysfunction AU regarding why he vanishes from canon after TFTM. It makes sense to me that the Combaticons would take the opportunity for some payback after the Detention Centre (even though Shockwave was just the custodian, and not the person who ordered them to be shut away).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revenge is a dish best served outside the view of witnesses

Shockwave never thought it would come to this. Crushed by the fist of Unicron, pinned under the carcass of one of his own Guardians. 

Above him stretched the sky, star scattered and crossed with the vapour trails of his seekers. The fliers died like fireworks, and debris was a constant rain. 

The ground was cool on his back. Once, it had been warm. Millions of years before, when Cybertron still orbited its sun and the warmth of its radiation met the heat of the living planet. 

Now the only living planet was Unicron, the only heat came from his devastation. 

Shockwave shivered, and he couldn't help but analyse the sensation. It came with a wash of cold, although no coolant had been released. It was a simple physiological response, a reaction to the shock of his injuries, the loss of energon. 

He issued an all-frequencies distress signal, and was surprised by the urgency of his own action. 

Astroseconds passed, his core temperature fell. Something leaked in his chassis, a brief warmth that cooled far too quickly and seeped from the cracks in his sides. 

A lull in the battle brought him the distant hum of a heliformer's rotors. Hope surged, strange and alien. 

It died when the heliformer landed. 

"Are you stuck?" Vortex said. He straddled Shockwave's chassis, cupping his head and turning it this way and that. Shockwave struggled to move, to push Vortex off, put his arms were too weak, his body pressed by the Guardian's corpe. 

Vortex picked up a jagged fragment of tetra jet, and worked it into the gaps at Shockwave's shoulders. Shockwave shuddered. 

"Cold?" Vortex said pleasantly. "They say the dying feel it coming, death. They say it's like a chill they just can't shake."

"Disloyal-" Shockwave began, but the pain was overwhelming, and a tide of crackling black swept over his visual field. 

"Better safe than sorry," Vortex said. "Wouldn't want you moving around and spoiling everything now, would I?"

Shockwave rebooted his optic, "This is illogical! You are required to assist me!" 

"No I'm not." Vortex cocked his head to one side, and slid the fragment of tetra jet into a seam at Shockwave's waist. "I don't think I'll bother with the manual release," he said. "I can work it off just fine like... this, ah!" 

Vortex bent back his interface cover, and Shockwave screamed static. 

"You're the lucky one," Vortex said. "A few joors and it'll all be over. Not like it was for me. For us, in the Detention Centre." He plugged in, and Shockwave saw his chance, but instead of the frail firewalls of this convict rotary, his attack met Onslaught's solid defenses, Blast Off's superior alpha caste shields. He could have taken Vortex, but the combined force of the Combaticon gestalt bond was an immovable object. And when their own attack came, it wasn't just with Vortex's vicious creativity, but Brawl's brute strength and Swindle's cunning. 

Shockwave's firewalls held, but his focus was not infinite. Vortex gouged great scrapes in the surface of his optic, and peeled the coating from the cables of his throat. Small pains, grating, irritating, relentless. Each one increased the likelihood that his firewalls would crack, that he would lose the ability to respond to each fresh assault. 

Vortex bit Shockwave's antenna, rending the metal, spreading a gnawing cold agony from the top of Shockwave's helm to his right shoulder. The heliformer shoved the shrapnel shard into Shockwave's fuel intake. The cap ruptured and the rubber seal tore. 

Shockwave held out until his gun arm was nothing but struts, until his chest was laid bare of all armour and insulation. He saw it coming with time to spare, and although it was not logical he clung to the illusion that if he could just keep going, if he could maintain his firewalls long enough, someone would come. Someone loyal.

No-one did. 

His warriors were dead, his army dispersed. 

His firewalls fell. 

Vortex's triumph was sickening. But worse was the whine of a shuttle approaching, the blur of purple and brown, the sound of transformation. 

New shadows crowded him, intruding on his view of the sky. He couldn't see them, not clearly, but he knew who they were.

Vortex sprawled over him, engine roaring hot, rotors shivering, and whispered, "We've been waiting for this."


End file.
